Friday, March 16, 2012
PRINCESS ANNE, MD. – (March 16, 2012) – Dr. Jennifer Keane-Dawes, dean of the School of Graduate Studies at the UMES, has been elected by her peers to be president of the national Council of Historically Black Graduate Schools for 2012-2014.
Keane-Dawes, who was the Council’s vice president in 2010-2011, will also serve on the Executive Board of the Council of Graduate Schools in the south for a three-year term.
UMES is the only Maryland institution represented on the executive board. The elections took place at the annual conferences of both organizations held recently in Jacksonville, Fla. Keane-Dawes has been UMES’ graduate school dean since August 2008 and was appointed by the president of the Council of Graduate Schools to serve on its advisory committee for master’s focused institutions.
Under her leadership, UMES’ Graduate School has awarded a minimum of 20 doctoral research degrees consecutively for two years, a criterion for the university to meet re-classification standards and move from a masters’ comprehensive institution to a doctoral research university.
Keane-Dawes is also leading an initiative to establish an animal welfare facility to support faculty and students research in UMES’ schools of Pharmacy and Health Professions, and in Agricultural and Natural Sciences. The facility would assist the pharmacy school’s accreditation efforts as well as upgrade the university’s bio-safety level to a classification required to be a doctoral research universities.
Later this spring, Keane-Dawes has been invited to be a guest speaker at a graduate school program at Princeton University.
Bill Robinson,director, UMES Office of Public Relations, 410-621-2355.
